


The Divinization of Our Passivities

by theunwillingheart



Category: Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: Angst, Martyrdom, Other, Passive Night of the Soul
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-16
Updated: 2017-02-16
Packaged: 2018-09-24 18:55:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9780554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theunwillingheart/pseuds/theunwillingheart
Summary: “What does it take, to get appointed Senior?” asked Kit.More.  So much more than anyone could possibly imagine.Spoilers for Books 1-3.





	

**Author's Note:**

> The title is a phrase from Teilhard de Chardin’s _The Divine Milieu_.

“I think we’re getting old,” groaned Tom, as he lowered himself to sit on the porch step beside Carl.  He handed his partner wizard a beer and got to work opening his own.

“Speak for yourself,” growled Carl, as he cracked the top of his bottle, “I’m as young and lively as ever.”

In a way, they _were_ old.  Like chess masters and musical prodigies, wizards peaked early.  By the time a wizard hit thirty, he or she was practically over the fence.  But tonight was altogether too wonderful to dwell on aging and mortality for long.  The warm air was the perfect temperature-- not too cool nor too warm, the kind of weather that was so perfect that it went unnoticed.  The stars and moon were back out, and the sky was still suffused with the last remaining high-energy radiation.

“The kids are alright!” crowed Tom.  “To Nita, Kit, and Fred!”

“To Nita, Kit, and Fred,” replied Carl.  They clinked bottles.

Of course, “alright” was relative.  Fred was gone, to Timeheart.  But he had been willing, and triumphant in his passage.  And Nita and Kit were shaken, but both had survived their retrieval of the _Book of Night with Moon_.  All told, the Ordeal had turned out fathoms better than either Advisory could have dared to hope.

They gazed into the beautiful night for a moment, contemplating the day’s events at each other’s sides.

It was Carl who spoke up first.  “He really did it,” he murmured.  He took a sip of his beer.  “He blew his quanta.”

“And not a moment too soon, from the telling of it,” said Tom.

Carl nodded.  “To Fred, and the timely blowing of quanta.”

Tom laughed giddily, spirits high on relief and victory and, well, _spirits_.  “To Fred!”  They clinked bottles again.

“You know, this could really change everything,” said Tom, after a while.  “Nita, writing in the book.  Even a single symbol… it’s brilliant.  I mean,” he added awkwardly, “the universe doesn’t _feel_ terribly different.  But you know that somewhere, many layers down, where we can’t see or measure…” he trailed off.

“Yeah,” said Carl.  And though he couldn’t feel the change in the universe, there was something inside him, a seed or core of expectation, that spoke of turning tides and worlds coming undone.

“To space pens well-employed,” prompted Tom.  Carl just chuckled, and raised his near-empty bottle for a last resounding clink.

\---

“What does it take, to get appointed Senior?” asked Kit.

Kit and Tom were standing in the Seniors’ living room, working out the details to a complex troubleshooting spell on a large sheet of drafting paper that had been laid out on the floor.  New York’s traffic lights had begun to act up, and Kit had a suspicion that it had something to do with the recent increase in activity of the Grand Central worldgate.

Tom laughed.  “You mean, _What did the Powers ever see in us clowns?_ ” he teased.

Kit put up his hands, his eyes wide.  “Oh, no, not at all!” he said, sounding embarrassed.  “I was just curious about the process.  Is it similar to developing a specialty?”

Tom paused for a moment to collect his thoughts.  “You know, far be it from me to speculate about the circumstances of my own appointment,” he said, “but from what I’ve observed, it’s actually kind of based on the opposing principles.”

Kit nodded, waiting silently for elaboration.  Kit was like that.  Self-assured, but trusting.  Good-hearted and good-natured.

“Specialties,” said Tom, “have to do with how well a wizard handles power.  A wizard is found to have a natural gift for a certain kind of work, and he or she is guided into growing a mastery along that branch of wizardry.  But I think Senior wizards are chosen based on how well they handle powerlessness.”

Kit looked up at that, startled.

“I know, it’s kind of counterintuitive,” said Tom.  “It’s true; Carl and I are given a lot of power to work with.  But even then, a lot of the stuff you have to deal with as a Senior is out of your hands.”  He paused.  “You do what you can, but in the end… it’s not up to you.  It never is.  How you handle that, what you do with it… that’s what makes you a Senior.”

Kit nodded again.  “I think I get what you’re trying to say,” he said quietly.  “Thanks, I… thanks.”

They turned back to the spell at their feet, silence stretching out between them.

“The Powers chose well, in your case,” said Kit eventually.  His voice was strong with the confidence of the young.

“I hope so, Kit,” replied Tom.  “I really do.”

\---

Tom returned home to find Carl in the kitchen, bent laboriously over the mop handle.

“Carl Romeo!” he roared boisterously.  “Cleaning up without being asked!  Truly, my eyes deceive me!”

Carl straightened and met his eyes.  Tom’s smile disappeared.

“There was sand everywhere,” muttered Carl desolately.  He released the mop and crumpled into a chair.

In an instant, Tom was kneeling at his side, peering up apprehensively into Carl’s face.  “Carl, what happened?”  He reached out to lay a hand on Carl’s forearm.  It was only up close that he could see that Carl’s skin had been scrubbed raw under his shirtsleeves.  “What did I miss?”

“I took a call for you,” began Carl.  He struggled, then choked out, “Nita.”

Tom’s blood turned to ice.  “What’s wrong with Nita?”

Carl shook his head.  “The Song of the Twelve.  She wasn’t familiar with the ritual; she didn’t know….”

“She’s the Silent Master,” said Tom, as the realization dawned.  “Oh, no… _No_.”

“I beamed over to meet her,” continued Carl, “on the beach.  Right out of the shower,” he babbled, throwing up his hands in frustration.  “But what could I do?  I gave her her options.  Such as they are.”  He turned toward Tom, his face pale.  “Oh, _Tom_ , it… it was the blank check wizardry.”

Tom swore.  He had not forgotten about the Moebius spell, but he had somehow tricked himself into believing that the debt had been paid somewhere along the way.  Fred’s sacrifice, or Nita’s symbol, or some other payment from numerous assignments might have rebalanced the scales.  Stupid.  It was never that simple.

“Poor Kit,” said Tom, “I can’t even imagine.”  What would become of the steadfast boy who was Nita’s strength and complement?

It had been the wrong thing to say.  Carl froze, horrified.  His mouth worked silently for a few miserable seconds before he collapsed into helpless sobbing.

Tom gathered him up, then, into a gentle hug.  Neither of them said anything.  They had been through this before, and all of the futile words had long been spent between them.

Carl eventually pulled away, hiccoughing softly.  He could feel Picchu nuzzling his back from where she had flown up onto the table.  “L-look at me,” he said, “disgraceful.”  He swiped feebly at his nose, let out a few half-hearted laughs.  “How long have we been doing this, again?”

Tom shook his head and handed his partner a tissue.  “You’d think it would get easier with time.  It never does.”  He took a step back and eyed his housemate critically.  “You need a break.  You’ve been working too hard.”  He moved forward and tugged on Carl’s sleeve.  “Get some lotion on this.  There’s a bottle in the upstairs bathroom, has some _Aloe vera_ in it.  You know where to find it?”  Carl nodded.  “Alright.  I’ll fix us something in the meantime.”

Carl gave him a watery smile.  “Tom Swale, _volunteering_ to cook?  Truly, my ears deceive me.”

They parted then, and began to pick up the pieces of the day, as they always did.  Tonight, they would rest.  Tomorrow, they would be needed-- by a girl, her partner, their families.

\---

It wasn’t all sad.  Sometimes the children got to grow up.

Of course, there were Nita and Kit.  But before them: David, Lucy, the O’Connor twins: Sam and Philip.  Brendan—excellent mastery of weather wizardry.  Latoya.  Nita and Kit lived close by, so Tom and Carl saw them more often.  But kids came to them from all over, seeking advice and mentorship.  It was a big part of their job, and they were good at it.

But that didn’t protect them from being haunted by the missing ones, the lost ones.  It was hard to tell, which kids would make it, and which would never come home.  Xavier.  Steven.  Rachel.  Amit—sweet, clever, little Amit.  And all the children they would never meet, who were led away on Ordeal before anyone even noticed the extra name in the manual.

And the milk cartons.

Tom sometimes joked wryly that they should go vegan, just to spare themselves the milk cartons.  It was the worst kind of shock, to see young wizards’ faces peering out from the refrigerator aisle-- dozens of them, asking, HAVE YOU SEEN ME?

They had.  But never again, not in this world.

\---

“Check it out.  Harrison wrote up a dissenting take on the Vernet Case.”  Carl handed Tom his manual, opened up to a journal article toward the end.

Tom raised his eyebrows and began to scan through the paper.  “Isn’t the Harrison group based out of Illinois, though?  How involved could they have been with the ‘Van Winkle’ Case?”

“You don’t remember?  Man, it was just three years ago.  There was a huge mess; they had to pull in experts from the whole region just to manage the situation.”

The Vernet Case was a one-in-a-million occurrence.  Uncharted space travel was always tricky, even in the best of circumstances.  But usually, when spells went wrong, they went wrong in mundane—though still disastrous—ways.  Failing to account for the mass of clothing and objects, failing to protect against extremes of temperature and gravity, failing to take along enough oxygen for the trip—these were common ways to mess up a warp.  But in the case of one Christine Vernet, a ten-year-old wizard from Traverse City, Michigan, something had gone squirrelly in the time constraints of the spell.  The manual had not quite known what to do with Ms. Vernet—sometimes she was listed; sometimes she wasn’t.  When she was, her coordinates and status were often unclear or nonsensical.  Friends, family members, and fellow wizards eventually gave up hope that she would ever come back from her Ordeal. 

But she did return—five years later, and about twenty years older.  In the wizarding literature, warping and gating experts took to calling her the “Van Winkle kid,” and it seemed that every time specialist had a different opinion on what had happened to her.  Outside of magical academics, however, the whole affair had been a nightmare for the Midwestern wizards, who had been tasked with managing the emotional fallout and damage control.

“You know, I wouldn’t be surprised if these kinds of events were underreported in the literature,” mused Tom, who was staring at some very complicated diagrams.  He had begun to pace, as was his habit while tackling complex material.  “Wasn’t there some degree of fugue state involved?  Especially at first contact, Ms. Vernet had seemed to have a poor grasp of who she was and what she had been doing.  Had she not been discovered close to home, it’s possible that she might have started a new life for herself, somewhere.”

“What, so you think there’s secretly a whole army of Van Winkles, hiding in plain sight all over the world?” Carl laughed.  “I’m just imagining a bunch of kids with long, white beards now.  Thanks for that!”

“You dork,” Tom began to laugh as well.  “You know what, to heck with it.  I bet that’s what’s up with all of them.  They’re all going to be spit back out with beards and creaking joints.  All of our kids.”

_Our kids_.  The laughter died.  Tom could have kicked himself.

It wasn’t just the fact that it was growing increasingly unlikely that either of them would ever get the chance to father children of his own.  They were both coming to terms with that, in their own, private ways.  Senior Wizard was not exactly a family-friendly position, and they had each accepted it.  But it was also the fact that claiming any kind of ownership over the lost children opened up a lot of difficult questions.

_Is this our fault?  Could we have done something differently?  Do they blame us?  And how could we not blame ourselves?_

_Why them, and not us?  When us?  And why not now?_

“Carl…” Tom ventured, his voice quiet and almost apologetic, “You know, if you ever need to talk, about anything… I’m always here.  Please.”

Carl faced him, and time stood still, waiting.

 

_“I got it!” Carl raced to the door, shooing Annie out of the way._

_The small boy outside looked startled but recovered quickly._

_“Are you… are you Mister Tom Swale, sir?”_

_“Amit Chaudhry!” Tom jostled Carl out of the way and extended his hand in greeting._   _“That_ is _your name, isn’t it?  Did I pronounce it right?_   I’m _Tom, he’s Carl, feel free to call us by our first names,” he took a deep breath, “_ Dai’stiho _, Cousin!”_

_“_ Dai _,” replied Amit, shyly.  He shifted his book to his hip and shook hands with each of them in turn._

_“Come in, come in!” Tom ushered the boy inside.  “Annie, play nice.  Peach, don’t think I don’t see you there—sorry about the clutter, we’ve been writing up a slew of recent cases.”_

_After sitting Amit at their kitchen table and handing him a soda, they got into particulars._

_“So, Amit,” began Tom.  Tom was seated directly across from the boy, but Carl noticed that Amit had a tendency to look off to the side, towards where Carl was standing.  “According to the manual, you live about thirty minutes from our house—how did you get here?  Have you learned warping already?”_

_“Oh, no, uh, sir,” Amit was still looking up at Carl.  “My mom dropped me off.”_

_Carl was alarmed.  “And she’s okay with you being here on your own?  She doesn’t want to meet us?”_

_Amit looked nervous.  “She had to go pick up groceries.  She’s always so busy.  My big sister and Auntie and I help where we can, but… well, there’s only so much we can do.  I told her I just had to ask you some questions for an upcoming assignment.”_

_Tom cleared his throat, and Amit turned toward him.  “Amit, I should warn you: as a wizard, your words now hold more power than they did before, even in the vernacular.  You must take great care to avoid speaking falsely, wherever possible.”_

_Amit grinned.  “Don’t worry, sir,” he said, “I only said_ ‘assignment’.  _I never said anything about it being a_ school _assignment.”_

_Carl laughed.  He liked this kid already.  “Clever.  And please, call us Carl and Tom.”_

_Amit talked for a long time, then, telling them about his progress so far.  He told them about finding the manual in an empty classroom that his classmates had locked him in after school.  He told them about how much fun he was having just learning the Speech.  “It’s like a kind of music of its own, or a holy chant,” he said, with a dreamy look on his face.  He opened up his manual and recited a spell that brought the sound of bells in through the windows to fill the kitchen with a heady, soothing resonance._

_“My baby sister likes that one,” he explained, “it helps her go to sleep when she’s fussy.”_

_In return, Tom and Carl had filled him in on the Powers, on Entropy, on the Ordeal.  “Got any advice for him, Peach?” asked Carl._

_Picchu ruffled her feathers and fixed Amit with a solemn look.  “Trust what the fire tells you.  Your music does not fall on deaf ears.  When the time comes, you will be enough.”_

_A chill ran down Carl’s spine at those words, though he did not know why.  He looked over at Tom, but if his partner had noticed anything wrong, he did not show it._

_“Well, them’s the breaks,” Tom said cheerfully.  “I’m afraid Ordeals can be like that—they often spring on you when you aren’t expecting them.  In the end, there’s simply nothing that can fully prepare you.”  He leaned in, making sure he had Amit’s full attention.  “Listen, Amit, the danger here cannot be overstated.”  He hesitated.  This was always the hard part.  “People can and do die on their first assignments.  You have to be ready for anything.”_

_At that, the boy’s eyes filled with something bright and fierce, which made him almost too beautiful to look upon directly._

_“I’m ready,” he said, with the strength and conviction of the young.  “Anything, to stop the Author of Death.”_

_That was when Carl knew.  He knew what would be asked of this child, before his Ordeal was over.  He knew that Amit would pass his test with flying colors._

_“Amit,” he had said numbly, and he had wondered at the steadiness of his own voice.  “Being a wizard can be scary, and really hard.  You know, if you ever need to talk, about anything—we’re always here.”_

_The moment passed.  Amit gazed up at him fondly, his face that of a normal eleven-year-old boy once more._

_“Thank you,” he said, and, rising from his chair, he stepped forward and flung his brown, bird-boned arms around Carl’s waist._

_“You remind me of my Papa,” he whispered, his breath tickling Carl’s ribs._

_Carl’s breath hitched.  He wanted to hug Amit back and never let go, to lift the boy up onto his shoulders and let him pick freely of the fruit from the trees that lined their garden fence.  He wanted to show Amit a different wizardry, a wizardry that allowed for mastery without duty, healing without sacrifice._

_A wizardry that did not exist._

_Trembling, Carl had lifted his head to stare at Tom, like a drowning man reaching out to be pulled from the water.  But Tom had not seen or understood the desperation in his eyes._

_Amit’s mother came for him, then.  As they waved goodbye, Amit looked back at Carl with all the love and longing of a son who missed his father.  But Carl was not Amit’s father._

_Fathers protected their children._

_Three weeks later, Amit’s face found its way to the milk carton on their kitchen table._

_HAVE YOU SEEN ME?_

_“It’s not your fault,” Tom tried. “It’s no one’s fault.”  Futile words._

_“It’s everyone’s fault--” and Carl’s throat stopped up.  They never said anything more of it.  Even Picchu was uncharacteristically quiet. They mourned through the actions of their days, and their silent grief filled the house, occupying every room alongside them._

 

Time waited, certain that she would receive them all, in the end.

“Carl?”  Tom was watching him, afraid.

That had been seven years ago.  Amit would be eighteen years old, now, a young man headed to college.

Carl searched his partner’s eyes and found his own weariness reflected back at him.

“I think we’re getting old,” he said.

\---

Those poor Callahans.  They never seemed to catch a break.  First Nita, now Dari?

Tom and Carl were exhausted.  It had been a rough day, counseling and comforting Nita’s frazzled parents.  The sudden onslaught of unbearably brilliant light that had struck in the evening had not helped sooth anyone’s nerves, either.  Then, of course, had been the reunion—good, but overwhelming, after all of that biting tension.  They stepped through their front door and braced themselves for the onslaught of their remaining semi-sentient, what-has-wizardry-wrought pets.

“Seriously though, they named their daughter Dairine.  _Dairine_.”  Tom said.  He scratched Annie behind the ears and fed her a treat.  “Can you _think_ of a more Speech-friendly name?  You’d almost think they were _trying_ to make their child a wizard.”

Carl snorted.  “I say it’s time you put aside that stuffy journalistic material to write your memoirs.  I’ve even got a good title for you— _My Pet Bird Was Literally Athena: Confessions of the Neighborhood Crazy Man_.”

Tom huffed tiredly in response.  “I rather like the sound of _The Life and Times of a Magical Shut-In_.”

“Mmm, nice.  But not as nice as _My Partner is Too Good for Me: Digressions on Carl Romeo_.”

“Very funny.” Tom socked Carl lightly on the shoulder.  “Maybe I should title it _Huh?_.  Nothing else, just _Huh?_.  I think that’s going to be the inside of the book as well: ‘Huh?’ written over and over again, for hundreds of pages.”

“I know, right?” Carl passed a hand over his face and stumbled slightly, suddenly dizzy.

“Woah, there.”  Tom caught Carl’s arms to steady him.  “Take it easy.  That doppelganger deletion spell took a lot out of you.”

“I’ll be fine.”  But he took a few seconds to calm the spinning in his head.  “Are _you_ okay?  I mean, the whole thing with Peach…”

Tom sighed.  “Yeah, that _was_ pretty weird.  And that’s coming from _me_.  To think that the Archangel Michael was just fluttering around our living room, all these years… but in a way, it’s comforting.”

Carl raised an eyebrow.  Tom shrugged.

“We had one of the Powers nearby this whole time, going through all of this nonsense alongside us.  Even if we might have thought… I mean, it’s good to know… after all this time.”

“Yeah.” 

It had been many years since they had last seen Timeheart.

_I think we’re getting old._   The rare telepathic communication resounded through both of their minds with such force that it was difficult to tell whose thought it had originally been.

“Won’t fight you there,” said Carl, and their shared sense of weakness wrapped around them, enfolding them in its embrace.

Tomorrow morning they would rise and lift it to the Sun, and the morning after.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first completed fanfic for anything, ever.
> 
> The idea for this story came from _High Wizardry_ ’s mention of the missing children. I can’t think of another series that so frequently drops weighty/ tragic concepts on its readers’ laps and then just keeps going as if nothing has happened (I mean that in the best possible way, of course). One idea that struck me was this, of the hundreds of children who head off on Ordeal each year and are never seen or heard from again. I remember thinking, _I want to know more about these children. Someone should write a story for them._ So I did! (Okay, so it ended up being more of fic about our Seniors than anything else. Oh, well.)
> 
> Also, I don’t think that I am alone in saying that Tom and Carl are easily my favorite characters in Young Wizards (as much as I love the kids). It’s funny, because we see so little of them in the books, but every scene they appear in is memorable. Carl’s and Nita’s beach scene in _Deep Wizardry_ is one of the most devastatingly beautiful/ profound things I have ever read, and that was what was solely responsible for taking my engagement with this series from passing interest to borderline obsession. There needs to be more children’s/YA literature written like this. Scratch that, there needs to be more literature written like this, period.


End file.
